In the absence of my colleague and the Plaid Cymru spokesperson on the economy, it's my pleasure to participate in this important debate and to make a few comments.

Without doubt, there are some elements of the strategy that we would welcome: a new emphasis on the foundation economy, decarbonisation and the decision to encourage businesses to be more responsible if they are to receive Government support. The strategy also refers to automation and the challenges that automation can pose for our economy. Automation has the potential to devolve jobs in important sectors to us in Wales, such as manufacturing and processing, but also retail, which is the largest sector in Wales in terms of the size of the workforce.

For our economy to grow and develop, we must understand what our unique, competitive advantages are as a nation. Wearing my hat as a health spokesperson, with a population that is growing older more swiftly than the rest of the UK, Wales is strongly positioned to innovate in that area, in promoting more use of technology, for example, in improving the care available. But I'm not here as health spokesperson today. In reading the strategy, you will see that there is a failure here to note where and how to make the most of the unique opportunities available to us as a nation. It feels somehow like a document that provides a commentary rather than a comprehensive strategy that explains how the Government intends to overturn our economic decline.

For an economic strategy to work, we need strong institutions to implement that strategy. When I was Plaid Cymru's spokesperson on the economy before the last election, I had an opportunity to outline clearly our vision and the steps that we would wish to see taken to build the Welsh economy. Having an economic development agency for Wales was a central part of the vision that I was espousing at that time, and at arm's-length, I think, is the best place to create that capacity and also to focus the expertise required to draw up and implement such a strategy. 

After the election, and specifically following the vote on our membership of the European Union, we called for a regional focus on the challenge of developing the economy in order to focus on ways and means of developing the economies of areas of Wales that quite simply have been left behind and know that they have been left behind. The Government strategy does commit to a model of economic development based regionally, and in order to achieve that, the Government wishes to develop three main regional offices to deal with this. Other than that, there is no talk of the other things that are required; the national institutions that would, in partnership, deliver the objectives of the strategy. I think the institutional hinterland that exists in Wales—the development bank is an exception perhaps—does mean that we as a nation aren't striking the right chord. Until this Government creates the kinds of economic institutions that other nations have—development agencies, promotion agencies, trade and investment, a national innovative body—as Plaid Cymru has been calling for, no strategy has any hope of delivering its objectives.

I will close if I may by making a few comments that would have been just as relevant to the previous debate this afternoon, on this uncompromising focus by the Conservatives and Labour on merging the regions of Wales with the regions of England. Across the globe, cross-border economic relations are very important, and that is true of Wales between the north-east of Wales and the north-west of England, and likewise in the south-east of Wales and the south-west of England, but don't be misled—